The following Five golden rules should not have to be a promise made to your customer. Rather it should just be a part of your daily process in the service lane. Having the following standards will increase not only retention but also your customer's overall satisfaction.

Here are the top 5 golden rules for your service lane

Easy to use Appointment Scheduling System

Your customer should not have to be struggling online to schedule an appointment. Or worse, if s/he chooses to call the dealership they should not have to be waiting an eternity to reach someone that can schedule their appointment.

Once the customer has booked their appointment and s/he arrives and they are not taken care of it can cause for a bad taste, and an unpleasant experience overall.

How many customers book an appointment online?

Wait time

No one wants to spend their entire morning or afternoon at the dealership. Especially if during the visit you are not keeping them informed as to what the status is on their repair. Customers tend to be much more understanding if the advisor spends a moment on explaining why it is taking more time.

In fact, if the vehicle will take much longer than expected - depending on how your service lane is set up - you can offer the customer a shuttle ride or a demo. In these cases, the customer will often shell out more money.

Clear Explanation of the charges

Not understanding the bill or services can make the customer not only feel uneasy but frustrated with your service lane. Making them second guess themselves as to whether or not they really needed that service.

Honesty can go a long way. Another helpful tip is that when the advisor is explaining the charges that they use a visual demo. This will help the customer understand not only the service but also the money it costs them for it.

Follow-Up

Sending an automatic email after their service might not always the best method of following up. Instead, take a moment (especially for large ticket items) to call the customer and see how their visit went. If the customer requested email (or in some cases texting) then do so instead of the call. 

Reaching out to the customer after their service can go a long way. Making the customer feel good about their decision to not only have the repair done. But that they made the right choice in visiting your service lane. This especially comes in handy when the customer did have an issue. Allowing you to resolve the issue before they do an online review or social media post. 

Check Out Process

As you know, I am a big advocate of taking payments both in the lane and online. This makes a huge difference for the customer. Where s/he is not having to wait in line only to find out that they have a question about the invoice. In the meantime, the advisor is already in the middle of assisting another customer. Causing the customer to either pay without asking, leaves them wondering what happened. Having them question if they got cheated.

Even if you call them after the service to follow up - more often than not they will tell you “it would have been best had someone explained the charges to me while I was at the dealership.” To which you would offer “I do apologize Mr. Customer. I agree, and we will do our best to make sure that all charges are explained.”

Bottom Line:

Having the following standards will create a better experience. Allowing you to understand better if there are areas that need improvement. Giving you the ability to work with those individuals who are handling that point of the transaction.

What do you do to ensure you customer leaves the dealership happy? Do you have your advisor or BDC call the customer after servicing their vehicle?

With the trends focused on increased mobile usage, it is important to note that with these trends come changes in how the customer *expects* to navigate your site. Not having a cohesive, easy-to-use mobile site can cause a significant decrease in not just traffic, but conversion!

Customers have been are continuing to use apps like Repair Pal & Open Bay. Both of which offer the customer a simple, easy, & engaging experience. So what can we take away from them? A couple of things, actually.

Here are a few things to avoid when managing or creating your mobile service experience:

Bad Menu Option’s

There is such a thing as too many tabs/menus on your browser. This rule is most important for your mobile customers. The menu should be a hamburger style menu and only offer the most pertinent information. The most important information to provide your customer is booking an appointment, service menu (with pricing), and current specials.

Think about it. A hamburger has 2 sides to a bun, meat, cheese, and some condiments/fluff also known as your meet the staff page and/or your blog. The meat, however, is the conversion points. That is the appointment scheduling tool and your click to call! The buns - which is your website - houses all of the important information together into a cohesive, easy to use site!  

Most, if not all, website platforms offer the ability to turn-off/hide desktop items (known as break points) on the mobile site.

No Social Ad’s (and if you do, bad ones)

Part of having good conversion is offering your services on multiple platforms. Having a strong offer with a strong call to action will certainly increase your click rate. In turn, there should be an increase in service appointments booked online.

The mobile coupon does not have to be a free oil change either! Instead, you can offer an end of the summer tune-up. Offering a last minute “road trip” special which bundles a few items. Allowing the dealer to still turn a profit even with a coupon.

Another coupon - conversion idea - is an amount off where the customer has the ‘coupon’ texted to their device. This has proven to be extremely effective with our store.

What kind of coupons have you had success with?

Too Many Clicks

Ever find yourself clicking the back button multiple times to get back to the home page? You aren’t the only one. This click happy reaction stems from not having the right CTA’s readily available on your mobile site. In turn, causing frustration and - more often than not - higher exit and bounce rates.

When is the last time you checked your “top exited pages?” This will give you some potential insight as to what is and isn’t working on your mobile platform. Make sure to give it a test run before making changes. Remembering, if it takes more than 5-6 clicks to get to the desired information the chances of the customer converting is much less likely.

Pop-Up’s

As tempting as it may be to “pop-up” a surprise coupon for your customer. Don’t. Not unless you have made sure that the coupon does not disrupt your customer creating a negative distraction as s/he is browsing your website.

Popping up coupons on mobile can also disrupt your CTA’s - especially if the CTA/Coupon is not relevant to the service customer. As most of the coupons on dealer websites pertain to sales, not service.

Do you have a lead accelerator for service?

Too Many CTA’s

There is such a thing as having too many options. And having too many options can actually lead your customer to not choosing any of them! Less is more. Offering the *right* options is all it takes.

Think about it. So you offer 6 different CTA’s. But when the customer clicks on any one of the CTA’s and the landing page doesn’t have anything do with the offer the customer will exit. Of course, exiting without having converted.

This is the case with the “coupon,” aka lead accelerator tactic. Wherein, the customer clicks on a service menu option and s/he is given a dollar amount of their purchase of a new car! Bet you they wish it was $$$ for their service appointment.

Bottom Line: Mobile marketing is essential for your core business. And while there is so much to say and so little real estate - ‘content’ becomes an integral part of your website's core. Having relative, easy to browse content will convert more customers. Converting more customers equates to more profits.

Whether you are using a marketing company or have a guru in house.  Don’t be afraid to take a minute and give your mobile site a test run. Use the website as if you were a customer going to the dealer. Noting that if it is hard for you - who works in the dealer - to use the site then perhaps it just needs some TLC!

How has your mobile marketing changed? What are some tips you’d share to those revamping their mobile marketing efforts?

Chat is nothing new to the industry. It is has been around for some time. Yet so many Dealers are still getting it wrong. Causing dealers to have a bad taste in their mouths paired with a sincere disinterest in what the service has to offer.

Customers want convenience, which can come at a cost for the service lane (some as much as $1,200 a month - who is your favorite provider?) However, if chat is managed and run efficiently it can increase your traffic, which in-turn will increase profits.

Here are some reasons and suggestions to help your service lane turn website traffic into service customers.

Most Importantly How many customers visit your service site and *DO NOT*  convert?

Most if not all chat providers for auto dealers have an online scheduling tool where customers can conveniently set-up their service appointment with the industry standard only being a 28% set ratio! That is a low number considering the average amount of visits to the site on a monthly basis.

The low set rate could be because there are customers who have questions that cannot easily be answered on the website regarding his/her visit that requires calling the store.

In most instances, the customer will exit the “appointments page,” as s/he is not going to spend more than a minute or so searching your site. Certainly not on their phone, either. They’ll either call the store or simply show up to the dealership. Hoping for the best not taking into consideration that there might be increased wait times as they did not have an appointment scheduled.

This scenario does not always end well for the dealer. Especially for the customer whose concern cannot be addressed due to a part needing to be ordered. Or in some cases, the wait time far exceeds their expectations. All of which could have been avoided if they had an appointment.

How to Add Chat to Your Service Site

There is a lot of debate on what the best practices are regarding offering chat services on your website. That is how, where, and who will manage the service. It's far too easy to setup a chat service, and just hope for the best!

That is not how to run a successful chat service. In fact, that will not only cause for you to lose customers. But also collect a bad taste in your mouth on what you think is a horrific ROI for a really *invaluable* service.

That said, there are best practices in adding chat/text services. That is making sure that the placement is in alignment with the usage. Wherein, you do not want the chat message option popping up every click. Causing the customer to exit in sheer frustration. This is especially important on mobile devices. Time permitting, check your dealer site this morning on your iPhone or Android device, and see how chat appears.

Rather, you might want to consider offering the service to pop-up if, in fact, the customer has been on the page for more than “X” time without booking an appointment or completing a CTA.

As you use the service, you can monitor the chat sessions per department vs. the total amount of customers that converted as a result of the chat service.

When is the last time you used a chat service and either had a good or bad experience?

What Chat/Text is Not Replacing

Offering chat/text services on your website is not to replace correspondence with the customer. Instead, it is designed to enhance/increase your communication with the customer. Allowing you to capture customers who might exit without converting. The ones with questions about their services that are not able to be answered simply browsing your site!

If you are concerned about staffing issues or having their answering service respond to the chat leads. Take a minute, and go to a dealer website that offers their service, and test it out!

The bottom line is that every conversion counts and if you are able to convert enough customers organically through chat than it more than covers the cost!

Do you use chat? If so, what kind of results are you noticing? What is one thing you learned from when you first started using the service?

There are two sides to every story. We live in a world where the customer is not always right. However, we know first-hand that it is ingrained into our minds that, well, “the customer is always right.” This is a slippery slope that leads to us chasing the customer that costs us thousands of dollars. The one that leaves hateful, irrelevant reviews.

That negative review though can also have a damaging effect on the brand. However, in retrospect, the customer will also look at your average rating. Sure there may be some instances where you have an off day. But that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t respond to the review, and close the issue!

Here are the top reasons you should respond to a negative review:

• Dealerrater suggests that responding to negative reviews can help remove a ⅓ of them! While this isn’t all of them every bad review deleted is good!

• Responding to a negative review shows you care and are willing to try and rectify the situation. A simple yet efficient manner to respond to a negative review would be to say “Mr. Customer - I am sorry that we did not meet your expectations. We strive for excellence in customer service. We missed the mark, and I would like to see if we can make things right. Please call me @.” You can even provision a recorded line so that when the customer calls back, you can keep track of how situations are handled. And how many customers call you back.

• There are some instances where the customer blatantly lies in their review. In this case, the best way to handle the review is of course not calling them a liar, but rather offering “Mr. Customer, we offer excellent customer service. And I am sorry that we were not able to meet your expectations. We appreciate your input and are pleased that we did (insert services) within (time frame). We try our best to avoid these instances, and are truly sorry you feel this way.” This is not always going to work. But if their demands/rants are that absurd it only makes them stick out. Not you.

Bottom line, we want to protect our brand image. There will be times where we dropped the ball, and in those instances, humility can go a long way. Not responding to the review at all, however, can also show that we are not proactive or worse that you ignore issues.

As mentioned above, if you have 1,200 gleaming reviews one bad one is not going to destroy your image. But a bad review is a bad review. And if they start accumulating customers only read the first page usually. In fact, most people will also sort the reviews looking at both the “best & worst” reviews.

That said if s/he only sees a bunch of negative instances they might not visit your service lane. And if they do - they might have a bias preconceived notion that they might have an issue, which starts you off on the wrong foot!

How do you respond to negative reviews? Do you find that it helps or in some cases, the customer deletes their negative review?

Related resource: Act, Don't React, to Negative Online Reviews

A brand is more than just your OEM’s logo slapped on the website or POP Marketing. In fact, customers know who your manufacturer is, but do they know who or what your Service Lanes Brand Message is?

More often than not when looking at various dealers websites, there isn’t anything that sticks out. All of the coupons (if there even are any) all look the same. And there is nothing that says who or why you should service at “ABC Service Center.”

Or in some cases, there is the occasional video of “why service here” where no one watches the whole thing. (when is the last time you watched an entire brand video on YouTube?)

Instead of capturing who and what your brand is on your website the customer is left reading the reviews - using them to shape their opinion of your brand. Something we have to remember too is that the customer is not servicing their vehicle every month or once a week. Therefore, it takes that much longer to change their perception about your brand if they have had a less than perfect experience.

Think about it for a moment. If the customer has a bad experience at a restaurant - sure s/he might write a bad review. But that bad experience does not shape their views on the restaurant industry in a whole, no? Why? Well, the customer goes to the next venue mostly forgetting about their bad experience.

Whereas, in our industry, the service intervals for many could be as much as 6+ months apart.  And so when the time comes for them to do service again they will go back to their last visit, which in some cases might not have been so pleasant. Sure, you might have reached out to the customer to apologize trying to rectify the situation. However, the damage is already done, and the customer will think twice before s/he returns to the dealership.

That is why there is so much emphasis and focus on what your “brand is,” which can make or break keeping the service customer!

Here are some tips/suggestions that can help identify who and what your brand is:

• Do your service advisors know what your brand stands for? Does your brand logo have a meaning?
• Does your service lane or dealer have a “slogan”? Might sound cheesy, but successful brands have a message or a theme that is recurring in all of their campaigns. While the OEM has one, which many require being visible in the showroom - do any of the advisors know what it is?
• If you do have good reviews - are they visible on your site? This will surely help with converting the customer who's on the fence about returning.
• Bottom line, there are so many places to choose from, and your customer will choose what is best for them. So it is essential to have a consistent brand image that translates well to the customer.

What is your brand image? Do you have a slogan that is part of your brand logo?

Branding your Service Center is more than just having a “why service here” video on your website touting that you have OEM certified techs. Customers want more than that and they want to see who is working for you looking to see how they are rated. Most importantly if the advisor is rated!

There are best practices for collecting reviews that will brand the service center. The two top platforms to collect reviews are DealerRater & Google+ Here are the best practices to start branding your service center with reviews.

First, Let’s Update the Website

It sounds simple. Have the employees reviews listed online. But more often than not many dealers do not have any reviews posted on their site. Not even on their social media pages other than if a customer were to review them on FaceBook or Yelp.

If the customer can see 1000+ positive reviews on your website that are directly associated with customers experiences with specific advisors the review becomes that much more valuable. It allows the customer to connect with the advisor.

In fact, because of the branding, DealerRater offers for your service lane there is the opportunity to receive “DealerRater Connections” as the customer “connects” with you for services on an individual basis with an advisor as they’ve read your reviews!

They even offer the ability for the connection to be sent directly to both the advisor and the managers via email.

Check Out

How often does the customer leave happy at the cashier’s office? Or (better yet) at the advisor's desk for those who take payments in the lane!? That is the time to ask the customer to review his/her experience online.

Albeit, the customer is still going to receive the OEM survey. However, that survey is not “branding” your store. In fact, the OEM more often than not does not even include your reviews or customer feedback on their corporate site for your store. They don’t have any reviews, actually.

Thank You Email

Despite asking the customer in the lane to complete a review for you, it never hurts to include a link to your DealerRater profile in the follow-up email. This serves as a gentle reminder for the customer to hop on and complete a quick review on their experience at the dealership. I will offer, however, that it is not best to send out an additional separate email as the customer might get turned off with too many emails.

The bottom line is this: branding is everything, and it starts with what people see online. If they see positive reviews that are directly associated with the people that are representing your brand, then it creates an incredibly valuable image. One that lends it self in hand when customers are choosing their next service center!

Do you have your reviews listed on line? Do you use DealerRater with great success? What is the best way you have branded your service advisors & service center with online reviews?

Several dealers reported record months in the service drive. With a record number of RO’s hitting the lanes each day, it is a gold mine for selling service contracts. Service contracts are a security net for both the dealer & the customer as s/he will most likely return to service their vehicle.

Here are the top reasons you should offer service contracts in the lane:

A Drop In Deferred Services?

With customers declining large service items a contract - in some instances - can offer the customer the ability to purchase the service with the discounts s/he receives. Or in this case, their contracts would cover the OEM maintenance intervals, which should be stressed to the customer as being important.

If they already have a contract that includes these items, then s/he is far more likely to return to have their services completed.

                                   What percentage of your customers have a service contract?

Vehicles Serviced past OEM Retention Requirements

OEM’s usually have retention requirements for your in PMA (primary marketing area; assigned customer base) customers, which can range between anywhere for 3-5 years depending on the OEM. Dealers spend thousands of dollars marketing to their customer base. Giving away everything from oil changes to steeply discounting services, which can have damaging - devaluing - effect on your dealer's image and pricing. Where customers will continue to expect that service at a low discounted price.

Whereas, if they have a contract they aren’t thinking about the price. Instead, they are thinking about the value the contract offered them. Giving them the peace of mind knowing that their vehicle is being serviced.

Revenue for Dealers

If service can pick up 10-15 contracts per month in the lane that is 10-15 more customers that will keep within their retention time frames. All of which is highly beneficial to the dealership. This service customer is also more likely to be a repeat purchaser vs. a customer who does not service their vehicle regularly with your dealership.

The bottom line is the service lane should continue to diversify its revenue streams. One of those sources of revenue is selling service contracts in the lane. This not only benefits the customer and service advisor, but it adds money to the bottom line.

Does your dealer sell service contracts? If so, has it been successful? If it hasn't been successful why not? 

There are a lot of costs associated with extending hours. However, with fixed-ops being the dealer's life line and main money maker, it seems like a no brainer to have extended summer hours two or three days of the week.

Here are a few top reasons you should extend your hours

Late Appointments

Imagine all of the customers that would now stop in after work? If you close at 8 PM, you can set your scheduling software to have the last appointment set for 7:15 PM. This would easily generate 10-15 more appointments per week. The Advisor (or in some cases a service BDC) can use this when booking the appointment via phone or chat if the customer isn’t available during the day.

Appointment Oriented Culture

The goal with the extended hours is to promote appointments. Walk-in traffic (which is most common for dealers) can actually cause for upset customers and chaos. As there is extended wait times in addition to the shortage of staff to handle the flux of R/O’s. That said, this “extended hours” is meant to be used as a means of making appointments for that time frame. Offering as “this Thursday we have extended the hours to 7:15 - that is the last appointment I have available. Are you available at 6:45 or 7:15 PM?” The customer then feels as if you’ve helped them by ‘squeezing’ him/her in.

Investment Revenue

With the extended hours being successful it offers the dealer the chance (based on 4 advisors) to add an additional 35-40k on the books per month. With that said, the money can be used - depending on the overall absorption, which should be 70%+ -  to reinvest in the service department. Whether that is newer technology in the lane (such as tablets) or even newer amenities for the service lounge.  

Bottom line. The cost to remain open for 4 additional hours per week can be paid back in thousands of dollars with appointments. Run the “extended hours” for 90 Days. Use the data to review how many appointments vs. walk-ins there were for the time frame. Understanding that there will be a percentage of walk-ins. If this is making the dealer money, then it will have a huge impact on the dealer's bottom line. In addition to giving the advisors the chance to earn additional income.

Would you consider late nights for the summer? Who has extended hours now and is having success?

All we ever talk about - it seems - is response time, engagement rate, closing rate, set-rate, show-rate the list goes on. And while I am not saying that the above is not important (because it is very important) what I am saying is that Dealers might be missing the point.

The point of we spend so much time worrying about leads and where they come from, response, time, engagement rate, set-rate, show rate, close rate (even writing it twice can be annoying, really) but why haven’t we taken the time to understand and review when those leads are hitting the CRM?

The busiest time for lead traffic based on a year over year study showed that between the hours of  12:00 - 2:00 pm was the busiest time.

77% of the appointments for Internet Leads (OEM, Third Party, & Dealer Website) were booked between the hours of 8-5PM

By the way, this is not an argument entirely for an amazing BDC Manager schedule, either. Rather it was a wake up call to optimize the success rate and ROI for all of the money being spent on leads - with several stores spending over $10k a month in leads.

In order to work with the data, we used a year over year lead data on third Party, Dealer Website, & OEM leads. Once we exported the leads we broke down the traffic times by using the timestamps on the lead submissions. Breaking it into three sections - 12AM - 7AM | 8AM - 5PM | 5-11PM.

It was found that 85% of the leads (OEM, Third Party, & Dealer Website) came into the CRM Monday - Friday 8-5PM. With less than 12% of the leads coming in after 7PM.

Taking it a step further we exported the appointments report for internet leads YOY - using a report that timestamped the time in which the appointment was created. In addition to whether the appointment showed or sold - breaking it down, again, by third party, OEM, & Dealer Website.

77% of the appointments year over year were booked between the hours of 8-5PM with a show rate of 72% and a sold rate of 58% with the busiest time for booking appointments being 12:17PM (to be precise) with more than ¾ of the appointments being booked between the hours of 12-1PM (lunch time, no?)

Appointments booked after 5PM - 12AM had a show rate of under 48% - where the top source of leads derived from OEM & Third Party (please note that I am referring to the lead that came in after 5PM that booked an appointment that day had a *slim* show rate).

If the leads come in between the hours of 8-5PM there had to be a reason, no? Well - there is a reason - 60%+ of car buyers today use their mobile phone. No longer does the customer need a desktop to surf the web. Therefore, it is considered best practice If paid search (SEO/SEM) is strategized to be spent during certain hours than you should see an increase of leads during those hours.

Google bases your “busy” hours based on web traffic - why haven’t they shared this yet I wonder? - so why not take advantage of it? Or maybe we are just ignoring it?

That said, we switched our BDC hours to 9-6PM - one rep working the graveyard shift 11-8PM (with me the BDC Manager working 8-5PM), and we have seen a *significant* increase in not only our set rate, but our sold rate!! This has been a *huge* game changer.

Tired of not hitting your monthly goals? Frustrated that your specials aren't adding enough to the bottom line?  Now Imagine if you had an appointment booked online that included additional services & products. This sounds like a home run, no?

I encourage you to test out your service scheduler reviewing the appointments for the month. Looking to see if the customer has selected one of your special offers! If your customer cannot select the special you are offering for service then how do you expect it to work?

If the advisor is aware of what s/he has selected and or if they have opted for the special then it helps prep them for the customer's arrival. Allowing the advisor to focus on other services s/he can sell to the customer. All of which helps them reach their monthly goals!

Here are some other key strategies that will assist you in up-selling online:

Online Marketing

Have an up to date service menu with special offers on your website. Another avenue to upsell products and services is including your OEM’s part store on the website. Allowing the customer to pre-purchase items to be installed at the time of their service appointment.

Product Demos - Yes, Demos on the Website

Have the hot products visible online! Videos are a very effective way to sell the product. The video does not have to be super long, either. Take for example brakes. If you have a special from the OEM for front/rear brake jobs then why not put a simple, quick video offering a brake special! “Take a break for brakes!” - have fun with it!

At the Dealer  -  Visual POP Marketing in the Service Lane

You spent all this time getting the website updated to increase traffic, right? Which in turn led to more appointments, no? Yet you do not have the specials posted in the lane anywhere!  This is absolutely hurting your advisors chance of up selling the item!

If your advisors do not know what the specials are than they are going to sell it! Not to mention, if the customer asks about the special s/he saw online, and the advisor is unable to answer their questions it devalues the special!

This is an excellent way to not only have consistency but to also upsell adding to the bottom line!

Bottom line - start selling your products online. This will motivate the advisors to keep selling. In addition to believing & buying into the offers you put out each month!

Do you upsell online? If so, what special/offer has given you the most success? Do your offers help generate revenue helping you achieve your goals?